Boners in the Bible

If you are offended by the title of this post, just stop reading here. It only gets worse…

And no, I’m not trying to be sensational or create a “click bait” blog post. I honestly have a question for you to help me on regarding … well … whether or not Genesis 2:21-23 mentions the erect phallus … aka “a boner.”

As I work my way through Genesis 2 for my One Verse Podcast, I have been studying quite a bit about Adam’s “rib” in Genesis 2:21-23 and am wondering if the “rib” actually refers to a boneless boner. Right now, I am leaning away from such an interpretation, but the evidence for this understanding is quite compelling. I am presenting the evidence here because I want to know what you think …

Here is my thought process so far…

The Bible is a Sexual Book

We Christians often try to cover it up, but the Bible is filled with sexual euphemisms and innuendoes.

This isn’t something to be ashamed of, but to embrace and accept.

Why? Because this is the way life is, and the fact that Scripture reflects life helps us understand that the Bible truly is a book about life.

Besides, we Christians need to stop being shocked and ashamed of things that which Scripture doesn’t shy away from. Like what? Like boners, for example. Believe it or not, there is quite a bit of coarse joking about boners in the Bible.

I first began to see this because of my job.

I work with men. A lot of men. The place I work is 98% male.

It sometimes seems I can hardly go 20 minutes without hearing someone reference to the male sexual organ. There are jokes about length, girth, and size. There are titles, names, innuendoes, and euphemisms. At first I was shocked by this, but then I began to realize that the Bible talks this way too.

Such joking isn’t a result of a “sexualized” Western society. It is just the result of males being males. But we Christians think that such joking is coarse and crude and so we frown at those who make these jokes, and look down our pious noses at those who laugh.

But we better start looking down our noses as the Bible too. For the Bible also contains quite a bit of “locker room” jokes and off color comments. Even Jesus had some “potty” humor (cf. Matt 15:11) and sexual innuendoes (Luke 17:34).

I later published a post (written by someone else) about how Jesus used sexual euphemisms to refer to two male lovers and two female lovers. Not surprisingly, I received quite a number of comments on this post who were outraged that I would suggest that Jesus talked about such things. Many of the comments were from people who were outraged at the suggestion that God’s Holy Bible contained sexual innuendoes and euphemisms. (I imagine I will get similar comments on this post, though I predict that few of these comments will also provide sound exegetical reasons for reading these texts differently.)

I argued in those posts, as I argue now, that we should not be surprised that the Bible contains references to sex. After all, God made sex, and sex is good. Also, the Bible is a book written by humans and for humans, and since humans throughout time and around the world all engage in sex and joke about sex, what would be really shocking is if the Bible didn’t talk about sex.

Anyway, as I was doing some research for my upcoming podcast on Genesis 2:21-23 (to listen to it, make sure you subscribe), I found a study by a Jewish Rabbi and Hebrew scholar who compiled a short list of “Euphemisms for Penis in Biblical Hebrew.” Here it is for your reading pleasure:

Euphemisms for Boners in the Bible

The Bible doesn’t contain the word “penis.” Post-biblical Hebrew uses the clinical term ebar (organ/limb) or ebar qatan (small organ/limb) but no such term exists in biblical Hebrew. Instead, the Bible uses innuendo and euphemism to refer to the male sexual organ. Here are a few of these:

regel, “foot/feet,”

Exodus 4:25: “and Zipporah took a flint and cut off the foreskin of her son and brought it next to his ragla.”

2 Kings 18:27 (cf. Isa 36:12): “Did my lord send me to say these words against your lord and to you, was it not to the people sitting on the wall who will eat their dung and drink from the waters of their ragleyhem.”

keliy, “instrument, tool”

2 Samuel 21:5-6: “There is no common bread at hand, only sacred bread if the young men have guarded themselves from women. And David responded to the priest, “Indeed, women are kept away from us as always when I go out, and the keliym of the young men are holy even on a common journey.”

Ezekiel 16:26: “And you whored with the sons of Egypt, your neighbors big of basar, and you multiplied your whoring to anger me.”

Ezekiel 23:20: “She lusted on account of their concubines, those whose basar is the basar of donkeys, and their flow the flow of stallions.”

yarek, “thigh”

Genesis 46:26: “All people … who came from his yarek.”

Judges 8:30: “And Gideon had seventy sons who came out of his yarek.”

The author of this book goes on to argue (quite persuasively) that the “rib” in Genesis 2:21-22 is another euphemism.

The “Rib” as the Missing Baculum

In his book, the Hebrew scholar points out that nearly all mammals and all primates (except humans) have a penis bone called a baculum. Ancient people would have recognized that it was missing from human males, and Genesis 2:21-23 is the etiological (a story to explain something’s origin … like how the skunk got it’s stripe) story for why human males do not have a baculum.

He shows that the word for “rib” (tsela) never means rib anywhere in the Bible, but instead refers to a plank, side, or beam in a building or boat. The word “rib” snuck into our translations through the LXX (the Greek translation of the Old Testament) and Jerome’s Latin Vulgate, and has become the traditional (and safe) understanding of this Hebrew word.

Now, I read some online articles that have discussed this idea, and I understand that people will think scholars are trying to get the Bible to say something different than what it actually says. But the truth is that the word “rib” is actually the result of scholars trying to get the Bible to say something different than what it actually says.

The Hebrew word in Genesis 2:21-22 doesn’t mean rib, and it never has.

This Hebrew scholar goes on to say that the word refers to the missing penis bone. The Hebrew people didn’t have a word for this bone like we do (we call it a baculum), and so they used the word tsela, which refers to a sideways plank, beam, or board. In other words, it would be another euphemism in Scripture. A boner without a bone…

Further evidence for this view is that when Adam sees Eve, he says “Bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh!” The word for flesh there is basar, which is the most common euphemism in Scripture for the “meat” of a man. So when Adam cries out in excitement in Genesis 2:23 after seeing Eve for the first time “Bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh!” … well … you get the picture.

Personally, I am leaning away from this understanding, but I wanted to put it out there for your input. Weigh in with a comment below…

One reason not to reject this view, however, is because it is shocking.

Don’t be shocked about boners in the Bible

We Christians sometimes get shocked by all the wrong things.

I was once listening to a sermon and the pastor said this from the pulpit: “Children are dying of starvation in Africa, and most of you in the pews don’t give a shit … But you know what is the saddest thing of all? Right now, most of you are more upset that I said ‘shit’ from the pulpit than the fact that children are dying in Africa.”

That pastor probably got fired for that sermon. After all, you can’t have a pastor who says shit from the pulpit. (Though actually … that’s probably what most sermons are … Ok. Ok. I’m sorry. That was a low blow.)

I am sometimes amazed at what Christians get upset over while completely ignoring the things we should be upset over.

I was reading an interview with George R. R. Martin a while back, the author of the Game of Thrones books and the popular HBO television series. He said that he finds it interesting and sad how people respond to the graphic nature of his books and movies. He said “I can describe an axe entering a human skull in great explicit detail and no one will blink twice at it. I provide a similar description, just as detailed, of a penis entering a vagina, and I get letters about it and people swearing off. To my mind this is kind of frustrating, it’s madness. Ultimately, in the history of [the] world, penises entering vaginas have given a lot of people a lot of pleasure; axes entering skulls, well, not so much.”

Think whatever you want about George R. R. Martin and his books, Scripture agrees with him on this one. Though Scripture also is both graphically violent and graphically sexual, it celebrates sexuality (read Song of Solomon) but condemns violence (when read with the proper crucivision lens). Yet some Christians get angry and outraged when a scholar says the Bible contains numerous allusions to a male boner, but they won’t blink an eye if a pastor uses Scripture to justify the bombing of our enemies.

If this post had been about how Scripture tells us to bomb Muslims, many would have praised it. But since it suggests that the Bible uses the ancient equivalent of words like “boner,” well, I can predict what sort of comments it will receive…

Comments

Yes, if a baculum was part of the DNA, men would still have them. But the ancient people would have noticed that human males did not have the baculum whereas most others animals did, and so this story would then be read as an etiological story … like “How the skunk got it’s stripes.”

Isn’t ‘used’ to mean ‘rib’. Perhaps (just speculating) a different word was used here do to the the unique (floating) nature of that rib. ??? The point of the passage is that Woman was made from the flesh of Man, making them equal; of the same flesh. Another interesting point can be found in verse 20 which seems to suggest (with the word ‘Neged’) that Woman was mean’t to be equal and opposite; a perfect counterpart.

Yes. This is exactly the direction I think I will go when I record my podcast later today. I will take the word quite literally as “side” and have it refer to a chunk of meat and bone from Adam’s side … indicating that Eve is Adam’s equal (but different) partner.

Dude, I love you!!!! Your willingness to just throw out things for us to think about, grapple with and examine is awesome! This is definitely an interesting article. It makes a lot of sense, and it causes us to think (or should cause us to think). Most of the time we are ready to defend what we already believe, not willing to be open minded enough to change. Your posts, and your One Verse podcast, challenge our way of thinking. I have gotten a lot out of both. Keep up the good work!

The last time I saw a theological discussion on weiners was when I read an article about ‘penile substitution’. Haha, this was both an interesting and an entertaining read. On a serious note though, I think it robs from the beauty of Ephesians 5 if we are all picturing ‘basar’s’ when reading it.

As usual, I never heard or read anything about “boners” in the bible, but sex is mentioned so often, that what your saying makes sense. Thanks for making me laugh, and you confirmed my belief that our God has a great sense of humor.

Jeremy Myers Wyarek, “thigh” as you say is a euphemism for male genitalia. Genesis 46:26: “All people … who came from his yarek.” Judges 8:30: “And Gideon had seventy sons who came out of his yarek.”

How about when they take an oath in the Old Testament by having someone place their hand “under the thigh” of another man? Swearing on testicles! Heck, maybe they thought the “foreskin” got in the way of taking a more perfect oath? And don’t the words testicles, testimony and testament all come from the same root?

BIBLE QUIZ QUESTION Abraham said to his male servant, “Put, I pray thee, thy hand under my _______, And I will make thee swear by the Lord.” (Gen. 24:2-3 & 47:29, KJV)

[Answer: thigh. “Putting one’s hand under the thigh” was a euphemism for placing it on a person’s genitals. That was apparently how the ancient Hebrews took solemn oaths because of the blessedness of the “seed” which God had promised to multiply to Abraham and his descendants. Today we take solemn oaths by “placing one hand on the Bible.” I guess if we lived in a “Bible-less” society like Abraham’s, the job of bailiff might be more “interesting”: “Please step up to the bench, Miss Jones, and place your right hand under my thigh, and repeat after me, I solemnly swear… OOOO! You’ve got cold hands Miss Jones!” And Miss Jones would repeat, “I solemnly swear OOOO!” (Wes “Duke of Doubt” Anderson)]

Speaking of the Bible’s male genital fetish, there is also Job 40:15-17 which doesn’t describe the mythical beast’s “tail.” (Creationists teach little children to sing these verses in Job and tell them it’s behemoth’s “tail” in the song, Behemoth was a Dinosaur!) Note what the passages says in context. The King James Version of the Bible translates it:

“Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eats grass as an ox. Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly. He moves his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together.” See http://biblehub.com/job/40-17.htm

Steven Mitchell in his translation puts it,

“Look now: the Beast that I made: he eats grass like a bull. Look: the power in his thighs, the pulsing sinews of his belly. His penis stiffens like a pine; his testicles bulge with vigor!” (Steven Mitchell, The Book of Job)

Mitchell employs the word “penis” while the KJV uses the word “tail,” and Mitchell employs the phrase, “testicles bulge with vigor,” while the KJV says, “stones, wrapped together.” “Stones” was an Elizabethan English euphemism for “testicles.” The context leaves little doubt that the “tail” is most likely the beast’s “penis.”

But most translations of Job fail to inform readers, even in a footnote, that the ancient Hebrew word for “tail” could also be a euphemism for “penis.”

Ancient rabbis understood it that way, as Mitchell points out in a footnote. And the context in this case points to such a translation. After all, what else could “sinews of his stones wrapped together” (KJV) be besides testicles?

Evangelical Christian translators of the New International Version of the Bible (the NIV) add in a footnote that the word translated as “tail” might possibly refer to “trunk,” which means the translators of the NIV can’t seem to tell one end of this mythical beast from the other! Trunk or tail? Who knows what it’s talking about!?

But one thing translators of the NIV Bible agree upon is not to let their pious readers know that the original Hebrew might also be referring euphemistically to a behemoth-sized penis.

The penis translation in Job also makes sense in light of how Hebrew culture was oriented around the penis. See the BIBLE QUIZ that I shared in a previous comment. I should add that the word translated “stones” in the KJV is often literally translated as “thigh,” but that is merely a well known Hebrew euphemism for “penis,” per the oath-taking examples I mentioned from the Bible, “put your hand under my thigh and take an oath.” Or, as another translation of the crucial verse in Job puts it, “Its tail sways like a cedar; the sinews of its thighs [that word again!] are close-knit.” http://biblehub.com/job/40-17.htm

I’m sure there’s a commentary on that. Seems obvious. On the other hand, I also read something about the phrase “covers his feet” meaning to drop one’s robe and take a dump, found in some other portion of the Old Testament. And let’s not get into “piss against the wall.”

Jeremy Myers Yad also appears as submit נָתַן יַד תַּחַת שְׁלֹמֹה in 1 Chronicles 29:24, i.e. they acknowledged him as their lord. See Young’s Literal Translation, “and all the heads, and the mighty men, and also all the sons of king David have GIVEN A HAND UNDER Solomon the king;”

Did all the mighty men and sons of David literally touch king Solomon’s testicles beneath his robe with their hands? If so, what a ceremony! Or had it become a figure of speech based on earlier stories involving the patriarchs, “put your HAND UNDER my thigh and take an oath?”

Jeremy Myers The Hebrew word for “mountain” is “shaddai,” and if you add one consonant on the end (the common ending for body parts that occur in pairs), you get, “shaddayim,” the Hebrew word for “breasts.” The French also have a word, “titans,” that refers to both mountains and breasts as in the “Gran Titans.”

Moreover, the Hebrews appeared to have favored women with large (dare I say “mountainous”) breasts:

My breasts like towers: then was I in his eyes as one that found favor. – Song of Sol. 8:10

Laban had two daughters: and the name of the elder was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. Leah was tender eyed; but Rachel was beautiful and well favored. And Jacob loved Rachel. – Gen. 29:16-17

Apparently Rachel was not only beautiful but was also “well favored,” which was the same terms employed by the author of the Song of Solomon when describing “breasts… like towers.”

Rejoice with the wife of your youth. Let her breasts satisfy you at all times… Why embrace the bosom of a foreigner? – Proverbs 5:19-20

Also note what Marvin H. Pope wrote in his article, “The Bible, Euphemism and Dysphemism In” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol. I:

Poetic allusions to the most intimate of female charms are sometimes overlooked or studiously ignored by translators. In the Song of Songs 2:17 the lady invites her lover to be like a gazelle on “cleft mount(s)” and in 8:14 the invitation is to “spice mound(s).”

The lady of the Song speaks of her unguarded vineyard (1:6), and there is frequent reference (2:16; 4:5; 5:1; 6:2) to the garden(s) where the lover grazes, not among “lilies” (as traditionally understood), but on the lotus, an ancient and famous sexual symbol. The body part praised as a rounded crater (mixing bowl) never to lack mix (7:2) is hardly the navel but a receptacle not far below. The all-spice part(s) of the lady (4:13) are not “shoots” but a “groove” or “conduit” [the vulva].

Song of Songs 5:4 states, “My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him” which is suggestive of intercourse…”Hand” appears as a euphemism in another part of the Bible which states, “You have loved their bed, You have looked on their manhood [literal Hebrew, ‘looked on their hand’].” (Isaiah 57:8, NASB) And the Dead Sea scrolls refer to a member of the Hebrew religious community at Qumran being fined for exposing his “hand.”

There is even sexual suggestiveness in the use of the word “couch” in Song of Songs 1:12-13 (which states, “While the king was on his couch, my nard gave forth its fragrance.”–RSV). The double entendre meaning of “couch” is illuminated by Rabbi Judah’s ancient remark that Jerusalem men were lewd: “One would say to his colleague, ‘On what did you dine today? On well-kneaded bread or on bread not kneaded; on white wine or dark wine; on a broad couch or a narrow couch; with a good companion or a poor companion?’” “All these queries,” Hisda explained, refer “to fornication.”

Also note the following verses:

Let us get up early to the vineyard… There will I give thee my loves. The mandrakes give a smell and at our gates [or doors] are all manner of pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for thee, O my beloved. – Song of Songs 7:12-13

“Gates” or “doors” are euphemisms for the genitalia. And the two-pronged “mandrake” root is crotch-shaped. Since ancient times “mandrakes” have been related to sexual potency. Take Genesis chapter 30 in which Jacob’s barren wife tells him she has “hired him [a child] with mandrake.” Speaking of “pleasant fruits,” notice how “breasts” are described as “clusters of grapes,” and be sure to keep an eye on further appearances of “fruit” in the Song of Solomon:

Your stature is like a palm tree, and your breasts like clusters of grapes… I will take hold of the boughs thereof: now also your breasts shall be as clusters of the vine. – Song of Songs 7:7-8

As the apple tree among the trees of the world, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste. – Song of Songs 2:3

Fellatio?

The smell of your nose, like apples. – Song of Songs 7:8

Translated literally it’s puzzling. “Noses” do not “smell like apples.” The Anchor Bible dissects the linguistics, concluding that this refers to the scent of a woman’s “vulva.” The reference to “apples” also mirrors verse 2:3 where the female “sits in the shadow” of the male’s “apple tree” and finds his “fruit” “sweet” to her “taste.” Should not her “fruit” smell equally as “sweet” to him?

Your navel [literal Hebrew, “groove” or “slit”] a rounded crater, may it never lack punch! – Song of Songs 7:2

yarek, “thigh” Genesis 46:26: “All people … who came from his yarek.” Judges 8:30: “And Gideon had seventy sons who came out of his yarek.”

How about when they take an oath in the Old Testament by having someone place their hand “under the thigh” of another man? Swearing on testicles! Heck, maybe they thought the “foreskin” got in the way of taking a more perfect oath? And don’t the words testicles, testimony and testament all come from the same root?

BIBLE QUIZ QUESTION Abraham said to his male servant, “Put, I pray thee, thy hand under my _______, And I will make thee swear by the Lord.” (Gen. 24:2-3 & 47:29, KJV)

[Answer: thigh. “Putting one’s hand under the thigh” was a euphemism for placing it on a person’s genitals. That was apparently how the ancient Hebrews took solemn oaths because of the blessedness of the “seed” which God had promised to multiply to Abraham and his descendants. Today we take solemn oaths by “placing one hand on the Bible.” I guess if we lived in a “Bible-less” society like Abraham’s, the job of bailiff might be more “interesting”: “Please step up to the bench, Miss Jones, and place your right hand under my thigh, and repeat after me, I solemnly swear… OOOO! You’ve got cold hands Miss Jones!” And Miss Jones would repeat, “I solemnly swear OOOO!” (Wes “Duke of Doubt” Anderson)]

Speaking of the Bible’s male genital fetish, there is also Job 40:15-17 which doesn’t describe the mythical beast’s “tail.” (Creationists teach little children to sing these verses in Job and tell them it’s behemoth’s “tail” in the song, Behemoth was a Dinosaur!) Note what the passages says in context. The King James Version of the Bible translates it:

“Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eats grass as an ox. Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly. He moves his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together.” See http://biblehub.com/job/40-17.htm

Steven Mitchell in his translation puts it,

“Look now: the Beast that I made: he eats grass like a bull. Look: the power in his thighs, the pulsing sinews of his belly. His penis stiffens like a pine; his testicles bulge with vigor!” (Steven Mitchell, The Book of Job)

Mitchell employs the word “penis” while the KJV uses the word “tail,” and Mitchell employs the phrase, “testicles bulge with vigor,” while the KJV says, “stones, wrapped together.” “Stones” was an Elizabethan English euphemism for “testicles.” The context leaves little doubt that the “tail” is most likely the beast’s “penis.”

But most translations of Job fail to inform readers, even in a footnote, that the ancient Hebrew word for “tail” could also be a euphemism for “penis.”

Ancient rabbis understood it that way, as Mitchell points out in a footnote. And the context in this case points to such a translation. After all, what else could “sinews of his stones wrapped together” (KJV) be besides testicles?

Evangelical Christian translators of the New International Version of the Bible (the NIV) add in a footnote that the word translated as “tail” might possibly refer to “trunk,” which means the translators of the NIV can’t seem to tell one end of this mythical beast from the other! Trunk or tail? Who knows what it’s talking about!?

But one thing translators of the NIV Bible agree upon is not to let their pious readers know that the original Hebrew might also be referring euphemistically to a behemoth-sized penis.

The penis translation in Job also makes sense in light of how Hebrew culture was oriented around the penis. See the BIBLE QUIZ that I shared in a previous comment. I should add that the word translated “stones” in the KJV is often literally translated as “thigh,” but that is merely a well known Hebrew euphemism for “penis,” per the oath-taking examples I mentioned from the Bible, “put your hand under my thigh and take an oath.” Or, as another translation of the crucial verse in Job puts it, “Its tail sways like a cedar; the sinews of its thighs [that word again!] are close-knit.” http://biblehub.com/job/40-17.htm

This is great. Just goes to show how much of Church taboos are in fact cultural rather than ‘scriptural’ in nature. In other words, someone got offended by something and decided to make a ‘God-backed rule’ about it.

Yad also appears as submit נָתַן יַד תַּחַת שְׁלֹמֹה in 1 Chronicles 29:24, i.e. they acknowledged him as their lord. See Young’s Literal Translation, “and all the heads, and the mighty men, and also all the sons of king David have GIVEN A HAND UNDER Solomon the king;”

Did all the mighty men and sons of David literally touch king Solomon’s testicles beneath his robe with their hands? If so, what a ceremony! Or had it become a figure of speech based on earlier stories involving the patriarchs, “put your HAND UNDER my thigh and take an oath?”

The Hebrew word for “mountain” is “shaddai,” and if you add one consonant on the end (the common ending for body parts that occur in pairs), you get, “shaddayim,” the Hebrew word for “breasts.” The French also have a word, “titans,” that refers to both mountains and breasts as in the “Gran Titans.”

Moreover, the Hebrews appeared to have favored women with large (dare I say “mountainous”) breasts:

My breasts like towers: then was I in his eyes as one that found favor. – Song of Sol. 8:10

Laban had two daughters: and the name of the elder was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. Leah was tender eyed; but Rachel was beautiful and well favored. And Jacob loved Rachel. – Gen. 29:16-17

Apparently Rachel was not only beautiful but was also “well favored,” which was the same terms employed by the author of the Song of Solomon when describing “breasts… like towers.”

Rejoice with the wife of your youth. Let her breasts satisfy you at all times… Why embrace the bosom of a foreigner? – Proverbs 5:19-20

Also note what Marvin H. Pope wrote in his article, “The Bible, Euphemism and Dysphemism In” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol. I:

Poetic allusions to the most intimate of female charms are sometimes overlooked or studiously ignored by translators. In the Song of Songs 2:17 the lady invites her lover to be like a gazelle on “cleft mount(s)” and in 8:14 the invitation is to “spice mound(s).”

The lady of the Song speaks of her unguarded vineyard (1:6), and there is frequent reference (2:16; 4:5; 5:1; 6:2) to the garden(s) where the lover grazes, not among “lilies” (as traditionally understood), but on the lotus, an ancient and famous sexual symbol. The body part praised as a rounded crater (mixing bowl) never to lack mix (7:2) is hardly the navel but a receptacle not far below. The all-spice part(s) of the lady (4:13) are not “shoots” but a “groove” or “conduit” [the vulva].

Song of Songs 5:4 states, “My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him” which is suggestive of intercourse…”Hand” appears as a euphemism in another part of the Bible which states, “You have loved their bed, You have looked on their manhood [literal Hebrew, ‘looked on their hand’].” (Isaiah 57:8, NASB) And the Dead Sea scrolls refer to a member of the Hebrew religious community at Qumran being fined for exposing his “hand.”

There is even sexual suggestiveness in the use of the word “couch” in Song of Songs 1:12-13 (which states, “While the king was on his couch, my nard gave forth its fragrance.”–RSV). The double entendre meaning of “couch” is illuminated by Rabbi Judah’s ancient remark that Jerusalem men were lewd: “One would say to his colleague, ‘On what did you dine today? On well-kneaded bread or on bread not kneaded; on white wine or dark wine; on a broad couch or a narrow couch; with a good companion or a poor companion?’” “All these queries,” Hisda explained, refer “to fornication.”

Also note the following verses:

Let us get up early to the vineyard… There will I give thee my loves. The mandrakes give a smell and at our gates [or doors] are all manner of pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for thee, O my beloved. – Song of Songs 7:12-13

“Gates” or “doors” are euphemisms for the genitalia. And the two-pronged “mandrake” root is crotch-shaped. Since ancient times “mandrakes” have been related to sexual potency. Take Genesis chapter 30 in which Jacob’s barren wife tells him she has “hired him [a child] with mandrake.” Speaking of “pleasant fruits,” notice how “breasts” are described as “clusters of grapes,” and be sure to keep an eye on further appearances of “fruit” in the Song of Solomon:

Your stature is like a palm tree, and your breasts like clusters of grapes… I will take hold of the boughs thereof: now also your breasts shall be as clusters of the vine. – Song of Songs 7:7-8

As the apple tree among the trees of the world, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste. – Song of Songs 2:3

Fellatio?

The smell of your nose, like apples. – Song of Songs 7:8

Translated literally it’s puzzling. “Noses” do not “smell like apples.” The Anchor Bible dissects the linguistics, concluding that this refers to the scent of a woman’s “vulva.” The reference to “apples” also mirrors verse 2:3 where the female “sits in the shadow” of the male’s “apple tree” and finds his “fruit” “sweet” to her “taste.” Should not her “fruit” smell equally as “sweet” to him?

Your navel [literal Hebrew, “groove” or “slit”] a rounded crater, may it never lack punch! – Song of Songs 7:2

Interesting and a funny read. But I’m going to go with the 2 Biblical pictures given of Eve and the Church. The first Adam fell asleep and God took from his “side” a wife/bride. The second Adam fell asleep in death and had his side opened by a spear. And it is said, the Church is born out of His side. So, working backward from Jesus to Adam, a hunk of flesh from his side, is the most equal picture. The Church coming from Jesus’s “junk” doesn’t work for me.